Compliance in regards to the taking of prescription medication is the degree to which a patient correctly follows the doctor's directions in taking medication. One problem observed with the use of prescription medications is a low level of compliance by patients in taking the medications as directed. For example, in the case of the brief instructions “take one tablet per day,” it has been observed that patients often do not take a tablet each day, or, if they do, the timing of the taking of the medication is not appropriately spaced. Appropriate spacing in this case would be one tablet every twenty-four hours. However, while a patient may typically take the tablet at the same time each day during the week, such as at 8 am, on the weekend, the patient may sleep later and be out of their weekday routine. This can result in the patient either forgetting to take the tablet or else taking it much later in the day. This undesired schedule for taking the medicine could have adverse affects to the patient. Also, it is not uncommon for a patient to take their medicine, but forget later whether or not they actually took their medicine. This is especially common if a patient is to take a medication several times per day and/or multiple medications per day, as increased medications and frequency of each medication represents increased opportunities to fail to comply or to forget whether or not they complied.
Various approaches have been taken in an effort to improve patient compliance in taking prescription medication. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,907,477 describes a timer to be applied to a cap for a prescription container for improving compliance. U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,798 describes a cap for a prescription container having a computer chip for monitoring of patient usage. U.S. Pat. No. 6,574,165 describes a pill dispenser having a timer configured to ring an alarm when a medication is to be taken. The various attempts to improve compliance such as the above have various disadvantages in terms of expense, complexity, and acceptability to the patient. For example, generally speaking, the persons who are most likely to need prescription medication and to be non-compliant are over the age of about fifty and, in many cases, are on fixed incomes or insurance plans that are limited in coverage. This group is generally less likely to adapt to compliance methods involving more complex and expensive technology.
Another approach, as disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication Nos. 2004/018898 and 2008/0077439, is to provide the customer with a calendar in conjunction with a prescription where the calendar provides information as to when the patient should take a prescribed medication. As broadly disclosed in these references, the calendar could be applied as a label on the pharmaceutical container or provided as a separate sheet accompanying the prescription container. However, while offering a calendar is inexpensive to implement and generally easy to explain and use, the calendar systems disclosed in these references are ineffective for several reasons. In particular, as noted above, compliance issues are particularly common when multiple medications are prescribed, but the calendars disclosed in these applications are intended for only one medication dispensed in a standard prescription container. Thus, if a patient were prescribed multiple medications at one time, the patient would have to keep track of multiple calendars. Further, the calendars do not correspond particularly to the containers. Thus, there is nothing that encourages interaction between the patient and the compliance calendar.
Accordingly, other approaches have been taken in an effort to improve compliance with respect to patient's that are prescribed multiple medications. Many of these approaches include dosing medications into a plurality of compartments corresponding to pre-assigned times to take the medications. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,159,451 describes a medicine reminder cabinet for dosing prescribed medications into separate compartments and including means for automatically dispensing the medications from the cabinet at appropriate times. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,217 describes a programmable medicine dispenser in which a medication administration schedule is programmed into the dispenser and a medication compartment is automatically opened upon acknowledgement of a user of an alarm instructing the user to take a scheduled dosage. Similar to the expense, complexity, and acceptability issues of the mechanical mechanisms described above with respect to singular prescriptions, patients are not likely to adapt to automated dispensers such as the above. Further, these types of machines often require complex counters and dispensing mechanisms that must be designed to accept and dispense differently sized and shaped pills. Such mechanisms often break down causing inaccurate dosing and/or broken or crushed medications. Additionally, such designs are generally bulky and lack portability, which is heavily desired in allowing the user to take their medications with them as they go about their daily routine.
In view of the above, traditional pill trays are still the most commonly used tool for compliance in taking multiple prescriptions because they are generally simple, portable, and inexpensive. Further, despite their simplicity, they are believed to be quite effective based, at least in large part, on the user going through the process of manually dosing the individual compartments. However, problems still persist with typical pill trays in that they must first be dosed accurately. Further, a user must still remember to take the appropriate doses at the appropriate times. In this respect, various approaches have been taken to improve traditional pill trays.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,174,370 discloses an automated pill tray reminder device where each compartment of the pill tray includes an integrated light pipe that is selectively illuminated for alerting the user to consume a preselected dosage in the compartment. While the pill tray device of the '370 patent includes a cover for applying a plurality of separate labels “used to describe particular dosages,” the labels do not correspond in any way to the compartments of the pill tray. In fact, the cover allows for placement of 16 labels divided into two columns while the pill tray includes 28 separate compartments divided into a table with 7 columns and 4 rows. Accordingly, the separate labels to be applied to the cover of the pill tray of the '370 patent do not effectively assist in dosing the pill tray. Further, the pill tray of the '370 patent would still be expensive to manufacture due to its complex lighting structure. Finally, the pill tray of the '370 patent does not provide a system for monitoring past compliance other than a pill tray compartment being empty indicating that the patient took the medication in that compartment. Relying simply on empty compartments to determine compliance is problematic for several reasons including the fact that the patient may not remember whether the earlier compartment was even dosed or dosed correctly.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,550,618 provides another improved pill tray in which an information card is secured to the pill tray. As shown in FIG. 2, each information card requires three critical elements: 1) a photograph of each medication to be taken by the patient; 2) for each medication, a weekly graphical representation of the medications as they should be dosed into the particular compartments of the pill tray; and 3) a duplicate of the prescription label that would, as required by law, already be included on the container in which the medication would have been dispensed. These elements are provided in a row format wherein each row includes information for only one of the medications. Accordingly, while the '618 patent provides information to assist in dosing the pill tray, the information card is extremely convoluted particularly in cases where the patient is prescribed more than two or three medications. In fact, as pointed out in the background of the '618 patent, it is common for patients to be prescribed five or more medications. However, the figures depict at most four medications being able to be provided on a full sheet of paper, which then must be attached to the tray in an awkward and clumsy way. Thus, multiple information cards would be needed for more than a couple of medications unless the information is provided in very small print, which is obviously undesirable. Further, when the information card is provided in a more desirable position such as the inside surface of a cover for the pill tray as shown in FIG. 5, the information card must be even smaller further reducing the number of medications that can be shown on one card.
Additionally, it is believed by the assignees of the disclosure herein that pictorial representations of drugs are at most nominally beneficial as many tablets for various medications are sized and shaped very similarly. Finally, providing a prescription label for each drug on the prescription card is redundant because a correct and simplified graphical representation should already identify the pharmaceutical and provide the correct dosage information. In summary, too much information on the information card as disclosed in the '618 patent is just as bad as too little information. Just like prescription labels applied to a prescription container, visible space on the information card must be maximized with important information laid out in an effective manner such that the user easily understands the information presented and is able to intuitively and accurately dose the pill tray each and every time. The disclosure of the '618 patent fails to do so in a convenient and effective manner.
Further, traditional pill trays typically provide no information regarding the prescriptions housed in the pill tray such as an identification of the medications housed in the pill tray, dosage requirements, and identification of the patient to which the medications are prescribed. While certain prior art references do disclose providing customized information for the pill tray, typically in the form of information cards adhesively attached to the tray, the prior art references fail to disclose a convenient system for modifying and replacing the information cards as needed.
Solving the above and other needs, the present disclosure provides a compliance system that is inexpensive to implement and promotes continuous and consistent compliance of multiple medications using a pill tray.